A large portion—in excess of 8 percent in 2009—of funds available under the Medicare program is directed towards the treatment and medications of End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) patients, which emphasizes the significance of this area of medical treatment. The success of the sought treatments, however, remains substantially low as evidenced by the related statistical data. According to 1999-2004 National Health and. Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in the US adult population was about 16.8% of the overall U.S. population 20 years and older, which indicated a significant increase as compared to the numbers determined in 1988, for example. For CKD patients with ESRD, kidney replacement or dialysis to preserve any residual renal function is commonly required. Millions of people worldwide are receiving renal replacement therapy, and this number grows at an annual rate of about 8%. Treatments for the ESRD account for $39.5 billion US dollars in both public and private spending.
The examination of bodily fluid samples provides support for patient care to-date. For example, hemodialysis (HD) and peritoneal dialysis (PD) are the currently employed methods to treat advanced and permanent kidney failure. The PD patients account for about 7% of all dialysis patients in the USA as compared to outside the US (Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia) where this number is much higher (between 35% and 80%). The PD treatment is recognized to be significantly less expensive than the HD treatment per year per patient. Incentives are emerging to keep patients on PD therapy. For example, a patient may qualify immediately for the PD coverage, whereas the HD coverage does not begin until after a 90 day grace period. Accordingly, the HD may be considered inconvenient by many patients, who would find it hard to travel to a HD center several times per week and spend between 3 and 5 hours per visit on an HD procedure that requires support from a healthcare team. Nevertheless, both the HD and PD procedures re found to be quite useful.
Home-based therapy, which includes home hemodialysis and PD, would provide an advantageous alternative to the existing implementations of the HD and PD due to lower cost and higher patient satisfaction. Barriers to home-based implementation of PD are defined, in part, by the risk of recurring peritonitis or inflammation of the peritoneum that diminishes the filtering properties of the peritoneal membrane and potentially reduces the time-window available for kidney transplant. Peritonitis is clinically defined as the occurrence of a turbid effluent in the dialysate containing more than 100 white blood cells (WBCs) per microliter, of which more than 50% are neutrophils The PD patients exchange the PD fluid 2-5 times a day. When the PD procedures are implemented as home-based procedures, patients are expected to observe the cloudiness/turbidity of their dialysate at every exchange and initiate a call to their caregivers if they observe cloudiness in the fluid. However, interpretations based on cloudiness of the dialysate do not provide the accurate means to predict peritonitis
Accordingly, there exists a need in a practical modality overcoming the above-described deficiencies.